Baseball: The IKEA of Sports

Baseball, unlike most sports, is not a game of speed. It is a game of patience, deliberation, and following instructions that don’t always make sense. Which makes it eerily similar to assembling IKEA furniture.

First, the pace. Baseball takes hours, with long stretches where seemingly nothing happens, punctuated by moments of sudden panic—just like staring at Step 17 of the BILLY bookcase manual for forty minutes before realizing you’ve been holding the shelf upside down. Pitching changes are the sports equivalent of running back to the hardware drawer because you’re pretty sure there was supposed to be one more wooden dowel.

Second, the tools. Baseball bats are essentially the Allen wrenches of sports: awkwardly sized, uncomfortable to grip, and capable of both precise craftsmanship (a single down the line) and catastrophic misapplication (shattering into splinters, narrowly missing a fan). Meanwhile, gloves are the hex bolts—necessary, fiddly, and always missing at the exact moment you need them.

Third, the rules. Much like IKEA instructions, baseball’s rulebook is baffling to outsiders. Try explaining the infield fly rule to a newcomer, and watch their eyes glaze over like someone confronted with a diagram of screws labeled “A” through “Q” with no corresponding bag in sight.

But here’s the subtle genius: in both cases, the frustration is the point. No one leaves an IKEA project proud that it was easy. No one brags that their dresser slid together in five minutes. And no one falls in love with baseball because it’s efficient. People love the ordeal. They love telling the story of how it finally came together, after hours of tedium, mistakes, and bolts that didn’t seem to fit.

Baseball is not America’s pastime because of its action, but because of its assembly. It is the sport that most resembles life itself: long, slow, confusing, frustrating, but occasionally punctuated by the joy of realizing that yes—you did finally put it all together, even if there are still three mystery screws left rattling on the floor. If you managed to stay awake past the 3rd inning, that is.